Hurwitz Group Puts Oracle in Top Spot

A report recently published by the Hurwitz Group places Oracle Corp. first in application server penetration and planned deployment rates in North America, giving the vendor the lead over competitors IBM and BEA in the application server market war.

The Hurwitz Group is a research, analyst, and consulting firm located in Framingham, Mass.

A report recently published by the Hurwitz Group places Oracle Corp. first in application server penetration and planned deployment rates in North America, giving the vendor the lead over competitors IBM and BEA in the application server market war.

The Hurwitz Group's report titled, "Application Server Market Share -- A Different Angle," cites the breadth of functionality in Oracle's application server (Oracle9iAS), the low pricing and total cost of ownership of the product, and Oracle's place in the database market, as reasons for the firm's increased momentum in the application server market.

To produce the report, the Hurwitz Group surveyed 150 information technology decision makers in North America. The results, compiled from a survey completed in late summer 2001, found that 37 percent of the companies using application servers had deployed Oracle's solution.

Results of the survey put IBM's WebSphere in second place, with 27 percent of respondents deploying the product. BEA's WebLogic ranked third with 17 percent.

"Oracle has penetrated more organizations in North America than any other supplier of application servers," the report states. "Oracle possesses greater application server market strength than many might have thought, and poses a definitive threat to market-size-based leaders."

In addition, the survey results found Oracle9iAS ranked first by organizations in North America planning to deploy an application server through 2002; 50 percent of the respondents plan to deploy Oracle.

The report concludes that Oracle offers a complete and strongly integrated horizontal enterprise application story. Overall, the research firm expects Oracle9iAS to both maintain and extend Oracle's position in the rapidly growing application services infrastructure market.